[CEO Rivals] 39 Years of Steel Men... From Joining Colleagues to Top Competitors

POSCO's Kim Hak-dong and Hyundai Steel's Andong Il
Once Shared a Table at POSCO, Now Each on Their Own Path
Both Field Experts Say "Steel Is My Calling"

[Asia Economy Reporter Choi Seoyoon] Kim Hakdong, Vice Chairman and CEO of POSCO, and Ahn Dongil, CEO of Hyundai Steel, are peers born just four days apart. Born on May 27 and 23, 1959 respectively, they both joined POSCO in 1984. The two held key positions as Pohang Steelworks and Gwangyang Steelworks managers at POSCO in 2015. Two years later, they swapped roles, with Vice Chairman Kim taking over Gwangyang Steelworks and CEO Ahn managing Pohang Steelworks. People around them call the two rivals due to their similar career paths, but they do not acknowledge this rivalry themselves.

"Iron is my destiny"... Crisis Management Expert Kim Hakdong

His name means 'child learning (學) about iron (金)'. Born to learn about iron, he devoted his entire life to making steel. After graduating from Chuncheon High School in Gangwon Province, he studied metallurgical engineering at Seoul National University and earned a master's degree in materials engineering from Carnegie Mellon University in the U.S.

During his university years studying metallurgical engineering, he became fascinated with iron. “I felt iron was my destiny. That destiny became my calling and my life.” Both his son and daughter graduated from Pohang Steelworks Middle and High School. His wife is a semi-expert in steel. She became so after listening to Kim’s phone conversations at home for over 30 years.

Employees say his hobby is ‘POSCO’. Simply put, he has no time to enjoy hobbies. The place where Kim feels most comfortable is an empty office on holidays when no one is around. He goes there secretly without informing employees to avoid burdening them. He catches up on work and reads books. He often enjoys watching the fire in the furnace. One of the main tasks at the steelworks is monitoring molten iron in the blast furnace. If there is even a slight abnormality, he must rush to the steelworks urgently, even on weekends. Rather than waiting at home and getting stressed, he developed the habit of going to the office.

His usual philosophy is that consistency creates excellence. He believes only those who devote themselves to even the smallest things can change themselves and the world. His philosophy shone during a crisis. In September last year, Typhoon Hinnamnor caused the Naengcheon River to flood, inundating Pohang Steelworks and causing a loss of about 1.3 trillion KRW in second-half profits. It was a disaster hard to explain with the dry term ‘one-time cost’.

At the unprecedented shutdown of the steelworks, the first thing Vice Chairman Kim did was rush to the site. He stayed almost permanently at Pohang Steelworks, wearing work clothes and helping employees remove water. He worked day and night on weekends. Defying expectations that normalization would take over a year, restoration was completed 135 days after the flooding. Recently, he formed an emergency management task force (TF) to reduce costs, strengthen profitability, and secure liquidity.

In the 2022 regular executive personnel reshuffle, POSCO Group revived the vice chairman position after 30 years. There have only been two vice chairmen in POSCO’s history. The first was Chairman Hwang Kyungno, appointed in March 1990, and the second was Chairman Jung Myungsik, who served from October 1992. Kim is the third vice chairman. When POSCO Group transitioned to a holding company structure last year and established a steel business subsidiary, he was appointed its first CEO. Among subsidiary CEOs, he is the only one concurrently serving as a non-executive director at the holding company POSCO Holdings.

Though a former steelworks manager, he is also a fierce ‘management competitor’. He turned carbon neutrality into an opportunity. The steel industry is one of the largest carbon emitters. He quickly established the ‘2050 Carbon Neutrality Roadmap’. He devised ways to reduce carbon emissions across raw materials, investments, energy, and technology development. He also set up a dedicated carbon neutrality organization. The mid- to long-term goal is to develop technology to make steel using hydrogen instead of coal. As a blast furnace technology expert, Kim is deeply interested in this field. Last year, he hosted the world’s first ‘Hydrogen Reduction Steelmaking International Forum’ to build an international cooperation system.

He often says at the steelworks, “Nothing is more valuable than safety.” Regarding safety, he established an ‘execution-centered’ safety system by implementing a pre-execution, post-settlement budget approach to avoid budget constraints.

"I know all the steelworks equipment even with my eyes closed"... Quality Control Expert Ahn Dongil

From Hyundai’s perspective, CEO Ahn is a ‘competitor company alumnus’. He was recruited at the group level to elevate Hyundai Steel’s competitiveness. After graduating from Cheongju High School in Chungbuk and Busan National University’s Department of Production Mechanical Engineering, he earned a master’s degree from McGill University’s Business School in Canada. He has two sons.

CEO Ahn is an equipment engineer by background. With the belief that ‘a sense of responsibility breeds creativity’, he has guarded steel production sites for over 30 years. During his tenure at POSCO, he worked in various departments related to production processes and equipment. He has a thorough understanding of the overall steelworks equipment flow. He summarized the steel business principle as follows: “Without equipment support, neither operation nor quality can be secured. You must understand operations to maintain the best equipment.” This means managing key steelworks equipment?from containers used to hold molten iron, blast furnace equipment, continuous casting equipment, to rolling equipment?is crucial and starts with a perfect understanding of operations.

He still frequently visits the Dangjin Steelworks site. Recently, he had lunch with about ten foremen of similar age, listening attentively to their vivid voices from the field. He heard their difficulties and asked them to strengthen safety management.

CEO Ahn simplified work practices, reporting, and meetings, and renewed the organizational culture to be more horizontal. After relocating the Seoul office to Greats Pangyo in Bundang-gu, Seongnam-si, Gyeonggi Province, he often eats lunch with regular employees in the cafeteria when he has no special schedule. He frequently asks about the new office and nearby popular restaurants.

When exhausted from management, he quietly sits and reads to organize his thoughts. He sometimes gains new business ideas while taking a break. If he finds a good phrase, he notes it separately and shares it with colleagues. He manages his basic physical strength by cycling and playing table tennis in his busy schedule. He says it helps him gain life energy and refresh his mood. He explains that a healthy body and mind are essential to maximize work performance.

He boldly executed major structural reforms for management efficiency. In April 2020, he spun off the metal casting and free forging product production and sales divisions to launch ‘Hyundai IFC’, a forging-specialized subsidiary. He decisively shut down the Dangjin Steelworks thin plate cold rolling plant, which faced operational difficulties due to a sharp drop in orders. Last year, he transferred the STS cold rolling business to Hyundai BNG Steel, strengthening market competitiveness through group-level business integration. He achieved management results such as quality improvement, specialization through spin-offs, and the introduction of a divisional system for efficient organizational management.

This year, he set a policy to create a ‘sustainable and eco-friendly steel company’. It is a decision to transform Hyundai Steel’s constitution in the carbon-neutral era. Hyundai Motor Group is a resource-circulating group where an automobile company owns a steel company. CEO Ahn said, “The automotive companies within the group will use Hyundai Steel’s low-carbon materials and improve them through mutual feedback,” adding, “We can lead a virtuous cycle structure suitable for the carbon-neutral era.”

He launched ‘H CORE’, a seismic-resistant steel, as a ‘premium construction steel’ and upgraded ‘H-Solution’, an automotive steel specialized service brand, practicing brand management. To meet the era’s mission of responding to climate change, he introduced the ‘Hy-Cube’ low-carbon steel production process to the market and achieved technological advances for carbon neutrality, including the world’s first trial production and component manufacturing of 1.0GPa-class low-carbon high-grade steel sheets using electric furnaces.

CEO Ahn often says, “Safety is not optional but essential, and all employees must practice safety activities to establish an autonomous safety culture.” In 2021, he created a business unit-level ‘Safety and Health General Management’ organization directly under the CEO, assigning it the role of a control tower to enhance expertise and decision-making speed in safety and health affairs.